Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…

Open Source

I just did an update on my FC5 boxes and found that FC5 Extras will update Xine in a way that removes functionality that was there previously. This includes the ability to play DVDs. I’m not sure the reasoning, though I think it has something to do with removing "non-free" […]

FC5 extras/ FC6: update to Xine removes support for ...

Fri January 12, 2007 in Linux / Open Source / Video tagged Fedora / livna / rpm / yum (updated 6855 days ago)

This is pretty cool. I just saw on Slashdot about MIT’s Introduction to Copyright Law course, which is free and part of the Open CourseWare Consortium. This is an interesting idea, offering college level courses for free over the Internet. What’s even more inviting is that universities like MIT, Notre […]

Open CourseWare Consortium: diverse education, FOSS-style

Fri January 05, 2007 in Art and Graphics / Education / Open Source tagged Education / graphics

After many, many years of using Applix Words for documents at home, I have just become aware that FC5 no longer includes the C++ library I needed to continue running the old Applix binary. It was bound to happen. But I need to convert those old documents (all of them […]

Applix to OpenOffice: forced migration

Mon October 02, 2006 in General / Open Source tagged Open Source / yum

This blog entry tells me one thing: software developers are still stupid. Have we not learned anything from bloated Windows environments? Why don't we just tie the X environment into the kernel and then embed all our X applications inside that! WOW! Let's see if we can keep the CPU […]

OpenOffice to embed Thunderbird and Sunbird? Bleck.

Wed September 20, 2006 in Linux / Open Source tagged Linux / lwn / MythTV (updated 6981 days ago)

See the Elephants Dream web site. This is kind of cool – a 3D animation created completely with open source tools. They’ve even included the production files for everyone to examine. The download is 99MB at it’s smallest resolution, or up to 450MB in other formats.Â They say it’s playable […]

Open Source Animation: Elephants Dream

Fri May 19, 2006 in Art and Graphics / Open Source tagged Open Source